There’s a few questions that always pop up when I speak, I’m going to tackle one of them today following a discussion I took place in over the weekend:
What’s the right mix for status updates (or tweets)?
I’d summarise it as the following:
- Frequency
- Relevance
- Personality
- Purpose
- Consistency
All of these are underpinned by the central question you should ask yourself – what do the people following me, who subscribe to these updates expect?
I sometimes see status updates, used for two different things, when really they should use two streams or types of resource.
A good example of this was the event that prompted the discussion, a bar in Bournemouth began posting every record played, as it happened.
- Some people loved it.
- Some people hated it so much they sent abusive messages to the bar.
- Most people were either indifferent, or switched off without saying anything.
Then the bar apologised… and the usual war of words/trolls began, but it was this bit that stood out for me:
A: “If you don’t like the updates unfollow”
B: “I want updates, just not a flood of them!”
A valued follower, taking the time to say “less updates” – I wish I could look back, or measure how many people either unfollowed or hid updates from this bar – it’d be very interesting numbers.
Anyway, the moral for me is – horses for courses – there is a place for the track-listing high frequency type updates, but maybe it wasn’t the same as the general stream – is that true for your business?
Listen to what your customers/users/followers tell you, with an eye on the quiet many – in the case above, the silent majority and the smallest minority that commented negatively were the voices that needed to be heard and not those of the vocal supporters (who interestingly mostly came round to the 2 stream idea, after I proposed it).
Have consistency with how/when/why you tweet/blog/update – occasional changes (like if you’re at a conference) can be accepted, of course.
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